Principal Software Escalation Engineer

Join Palo Alto Networks as a Principal Software Escalation Engineer, a high-impact leadership role that influences product design, architecture, and customer success. You will act as the "Voice of the Customer," shaping how our products are built and delivered. Your responsibilities will include defining product and supportability requirements, owning the R&D escalation strategy, driving operational excellence, empowering the support organization, leading the incident lifecycle and CAPA, and influencing the roadmap. Enjoy a range of benefits, including healthcare, wellness programs, professional development, financial perks, time off, and various on-site perks.

• Act as the "Voice of the Customer" within the engineering lifecycle, influencing architectural decisions to ensure robust and intuitive solutions.
• Define holistic product and supportability requirements, specifying capabilities needed to streamline the entire customer journey.
• Own the R&D escalation strategy, acting as the single accountable authority for technical escalations and driving operational excellence.

• 8+ years of experience in the software industry (Technical Support, R&D, or Sustaining Engineering)
• Exceptional communication and leadership skills: You can challenge a Product Manager on a use case or guide a developer on a logging standard with equal confidence
• Strong technical depth (scripting in Python/Bash/Go, reading code, SQL) to investigate issues independently and build tooling
• Proven ability to drive cross-team initiatives and influence stakeholders without direct authority
• 5+ years of hands-on experience troubleshooting complex SaaS/Cloud environments (AWS preferred)
• A "Product-Engineering" Mindset: You can look at a technical design and immediately foresee how a customer will struggle with it. You care deeply about the user experience, not just the code execution
• Highly self-motivated with a strong sense of ownership and accountability
• Experience defining "Definition of Ready" processes for escalation handling
• Experience defining architectural standards for observability and deployability
• Background in Customer Success Engineering or Solutions Engineering
• Experience in the Cyber Security domain